


Every Day's Most Quiet Need

by mackenziebutterschnapps (hannibalsbattlebot)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post Finale, Post S3, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 16:57:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5172056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannibalsbattlebot/pseuds/mackenziebutterschnapps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post TWOTL Hannigram. These two guys are not good with feelings, especially good feelings. There is flirting but mostly pining. So, so much pining.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Day's Most Quiet Need

"Behind!"

Will called out the warning as he passed behind Hannibal with the hot roasting pan. Hannibal was sautéing mushrooms at the stove and the space in the kitchen was tight. As Will passed behind him, he put his hand on Hannibal's back.  It was a light touch, innocently above the belt line, but Hannibal jerked away so suddenly he lost his grip on the pan and it fell to the floor, splattering the tile, the lower cabinets and their pant legs with its hot contents.

Hannibal apologized. "Clumsy of me," he said, and went for the roll of paper towels.

"What happened?"

"You surprised me," he said, scooping the mess up with wads of paper towels. "My mind was elsewhere. I should know better than to let my attention wander in the kitchen. That's how people get hurt."

Will thought about this through dinner as he pushed bits of meat around on his plate.  If there was anything Hannibal took seriously, it was food.  And Hannibal _always_ had steady nerves with hands to match. He was rarely taken by surprise, at a loss for words, or flustered, but this time he had been from the simplest touch. Two things had surprised Will: how much he wanted to touch Hannibal, and how Hannibal's reaction to the touch had been the opposite of what he would have expected.

 

It didn't make any sense.

Will hadn't been paying attention, but now he noticed it. They never touched. Never.

Hannibal managed to be smooth about it, gliding away from Will when he came close, a reasonable excuse on his lips. Something someplace else urgently needed his attention. They shared the same bed, but not once had Hannibal crossed the no-man's-land running down the center of the mattress.  

The same arched eyebrow that had gotten Will such a wicked smile in return when he begged pretty please in the BSHCI, now got an eye shift or throat clearing in response. _He isn't so bold without a sheet of plexiglass between us,_ Will thought.

Of course, Will thought, Hannibal was a master of pursuing while looking like the pursued. Playing coy suited him well. It must be another one of his old-world affectations and Will let himself be charmed by it. He was amused by Hannibal's gentlemanly evasions and the logical contortions he put himself through to maintain them.

When they sat on the couch and Will dug his bare feet under Hannibal's thighs, Hannibal jumped up to adjust the thermostat and brought Will his slippers. Wearing Hannibal's clothes, like his pajama pants with nothing else underneath or a dress shirt Will left unbuttoned down to his navel, was met with offers to help Will with the laundry. Walking through a room freshly showered and completely nude elicited only the comment "Are you too warm? I can turn the thermostat back down."

Down on one knee, lacing up his shoes before going for a bike ride down to the corner store, Will put his hand on Hannibal's knee before he got to his feet. He looked up at him through his long eyelashes and said, "Is there anything you want? Anything I can get for you?"

"Today's paper," Hannibal responded, "and orange juice."

 

In close quarters Will was difficult to ignore.

Only when was gone on one of his many runs could Hannibal relax his constant guard. Will was friendlier than ever, at ease in his presence the way he had rarely been before. And this was proving dangerous.

For Hannibal, the instances were minor but cumulative, like drops of water wearing a channel in a boulder. He was a sentimentalist. The smallest things Will did dug gouges in his heart. It would have been easier to kill him than to live with him like this, so he congratulated himself on his restraint. He had only recently acquired this ability. He was proud of himself.

Living in each other's pockets like this it was impossible to avoid these moments of intimacy, so Hannibal made the mental effort to enjoy them. When Will idly touched his own face, his fingers tracing the line of his scar, or when he undressed for bed, or bit his lip in unconscious concentration or did any of the thousand other things he did on a daily basis that made Hannibal's heart lurch and a wave of arousal clutch at him, Hannibal simply accepted the situation. Rather than flinching away, he encouraged himself to fully feel the bittersweet pang of these moments.

If, for example, the man he loved with every fiber of his being returned, flushed and dewy with sweat, from an early morning jog and started peeling off his damp clothes when he was barely in the door, Hannibal would look away and privately let that image wash over him. It would crest and then sink into him like dry ground taking in spring rain. Then he took that moment, put it in a box, and mentally filed it on a shelf in a limitless storehouse.

He expected there would be fewer boxes by now, but he realized that old desires were just being replaced with new ones. One thirst was slaked only to have another pop up in its place. He hadn't counted on that.

 

Will could have everything else in abundance--food and exercise and violence and music—but sex was the itch left unscratched. He didn't know how to say _You ache for me and I ache for you_. 

The more Will touched Hannibal, the more it affected _him_ , while, other than the dropped pan incident, it seemed Hannibal's reaction to this was indifference.

Will wasn't indifferent. His thoughts were increasingly carnal and harder to control. He was cursed with a vivid imagination that had nowhere else to go except the gutter. The specificity and variation of his mental images was limitless. He spent a long weekend looking at Hannibal's hands, marveling at how graceful and strong they were. He watched avidly as Hannibal's agile fingers folded and crimped dumplings for dinner.

"You look hungry," Hannibal said when he noticed he was being watched. "I hope you've built up an appetite."

 And then, without warning, Will couldn't stop looking at Hannibal's mouth. The way his teeth showed when he was genuinely smiling. The way he rolled his lips after he took a sip of wine. He noticed the singular way Hannibal licked his finger to turn a page in a book. Instead of dragging the pad of his thumb across his tongue like Will might have, he brought his thumb close to his mouth then extended his tongue and gave his own finger a delicate, cat-like lick.

While Hannibal sat, barely conscious of his automatic and utterly practical movement, Will watched him, and filled in the unspoken narration.

 _Are you fantasizing about what else I can do with this tongue? Did you ever stop to wonder what I_ wouldn't _put in my mouth? And how does that make you feel?_

It made him feel he needed a very long, very cold shower.

 

Using the shower directly after Will was a challenge at times, Hannibal thought. What Will probably considered a discrete and polite handling of the situation instead turned the entire bathroom into a small steamy box permeated with the inescapable smell of his sex.

 

That night Will waited impatiently for them to go to bed. Every time he tried to gently hint that they should go to bed that they share, Hannibal mentioned something else he wanted to do—scrub out a pot, listen to one more song, finish another chapter in his book—before he would be ready.

"But you go ahead if you're tired. You don't have to wait for me. I may be up for a while."

Will went to bed alone and fell asleep waiting. He woke up when Hannibal came to bed hours later.  He rolled over and rested his hand on Hannibal's bare stomach. He heard Hannibal breath in and hold the breath as if he didn't want to move. Will moved in closer and rested his face on Hannibal's shoulder. He passed his hand over Hannibal's chest and when his fingertip skimmed one nipple, moaned as if he had been the one who had been touched.

Hannibal shifted in bed, turning towards Will, gripping his shoulder and pressing him flat on his back. Will felt a warm flush pass through his belly and down.

"Will," Hannibal said sharply and gave him a shake. "Wake up. You are having a dream. Do you feel ill?" He felt Will's forehead briefly with the back of his hand.

"I feel…wonderful," he said and reached out again.

Hannibal removed Will's hand and firmly pressed it back on Will's own chest. "You must have been having a good dream, then. You should try to return to it. I'm sorry I woke you." Then he turned his back to him and went to sleep.

Maybe there was ambiguity to the situation, Will thought. He was known to have strange and vivid dreams when he was sick. Hannibal was being cautious, he told himself, that was all.

The next day, the incident of the "dream" wasn't mentioned.

 

It was Will's turn to cook that night and he asked if Hannibal would help him in the kitchen. Will set him to work chopping peppers and poured them both a glass of wine. He waited until Hannibal had settled into a comfortable rhythm of rapid chopping and sweeping the board with the flat of his knife before he spoke.

"Hannibal," he said. "Are you happy?"

The sound of the knife stopped only for a moment.

"I'm very happy."

"Are you satisfied?"

"What's the difference?"

Will set down his own knife and wiped his hands on his apron. "I'm very happy with our life, but I'm not satisfied," he said.

Will watched Hannibal toy with the idea of playing dumb, and then abandon it. "I get the impression that you think there is something lacking from our relationship. A physical element."

"Don't you?"

Hannibal swept the peppers into the bowl and started chopping onion. "A relationship between two people can be loving and intimate and fulfilling without necessarily being sexual. That's something both partners have to agree on. We aren't in agreement."  Sweep. The diced onions hit the bottom of the metal bowl with a patter.  "When I said this is all I wanted for us, that's what I meant. We hunted together as one, united in purpose, and victorious. That was _all_ I wanted. I was, and am, totally satisfied. I took it for granted that you were too, but that was inconsiderate of me."

A blush creeped up Will's neck. Hannibal had to look away. He wasn't doing it on purpose, but he couldn't help reacting to it.

"I still love you," Hannibal said.

"You love me?" Will said, "but you don't want a physical relationship with me."

His lips parted and it took him a moment to respond. He thought about the rows of boxes, each blank and immaculate cream-colored paper on the outside, each containing inside a bottled moment of unbearable beauty inside. "No," he said. "I don't think about you in that way."

Will was surprised by how crushed he felt, and how offended. He had always assumed a physical relationship was his to take or leave. Instead he had been throwing himself at someone who had no interest in him in that way.  

"You almost _ate my brain_."  Will untied his apron and whipped it off. The starched white cotton snapped. "You find me edible, but not fuckable? That's funny."

"I'm sorry if you feel misled," he said, "but our relationship was never about sex on any level."

"Like hell it wasn't!" Will said.

"Romance, yes. I'll admit to that. I cherish you, but that has little to do with what a person does with their genitals. We are more intimate than most lovers, closer emotionally than most husbands and wives. Conversely, sex can be as impersonal as a handshake. What would becoming lovers add to our lives except needless complications?"

 "Sex! That's what it would add" Will said, exasperated. " _You are my everything._ That sounds so romantic, but it means I can't bring another person into my life, even for impersonal…handshake sex! If you aren't interested in me that way, do I have to give you my vow of celibacy as another offering? Talk about having a God complex!"

"I'm not telling you to be celibate. Just as long as you eventually come home to me."

 "You don't think that being lovers would bring us closer?"

Hannibal didn't answer. He had lied enough already.

"Or, _conversely_ , that me taking day trips for casual sex romps would drive us apart?" Will said. "If this is really how you feel, we should have had this conversation a long time ago."

"I agree," Hannibal said.  "Again, I'm sorry."

Will leaned forward over the counter island and got into Hannibal's personal space. "Then why would you let me throw myself at you just to put me off me time and again? Did you just miss seeing me suffer that much?"

Hannibal's gaze cooled and he squared his shoulders. He had put up an invisible barrier between them as solid as a pane of glass.

"Why did you continue your behavior when you saw it made me uncomfortable?"

Will had no answer to that. He hated when Hannibal could claim the moral high ground.

Although it was dark and threatening rain, Will put on his coat and left for a very long walk. Hannibal listened to the door slam and continued chopping onion.  He considered cooking the rest of the meal. Instead, he finished the prep work and put everything back in the fridge, neatly portioned in covered glass bowls. Then he made two sandwiches. One he ate and the other he wrapped up and put in the fridge where it would be noticed if Will came home hungry. 

Next he made up the couch as a bed. When Will came back he was sitting on it, still dressed but propped up on his pillow with a blanket covering his feet. Settled in. They would sleep apart, but Will wasn't banished. Hannibal was banishing himself.

 

Will slept poorly. He kept waking up and feeling cold absence around him. Hannibal had even taken his pillow. The blank space at the head of the bed made it clear Hannibal hadn't just gotten up for a drink of water or to use the bathroom. He was gone from their bed, perhaps for good. Will slid his hand over the cool place on the sheet where Hannibal should be. He thought he was playing a game that they would both win. But it wasn't a game and they had both lost. He had gone looking for chinks in Hannibal's armor and found the gaps in his own, worked his fingers inside and ripped them wide open.

 

For the next week Will spent as much time outside as possible walking, jogging and biking. When he was inside he felt trapped in a cage, worse than alone.

_You were supposed to be my everything._

Will's walks brought him to the nameless bar downtown. He eventually found out it did have a name--The Salty Dog--but it had no signage outside. There was a captain's wheel on one wall, the single concession to nautical décor. He spent longer and longer there each night. He was well on his way to becoming a regular.

"Where do you go?" Hannibal asked him as he headed out, yet again.

"Out," Will snapped. "A bar. As long as I come home to you at the end of the night it shouldn't matter."

Hannibal stood up and came over to him.

"Do you want to take the car?"

"No thank you."

He reached for the doorknob, but Hannibal closed the door with the flat of his hand and held it shut.

"Could I ask you to reconsider?" he said. He held the edge of Will's coat first with two fingers and then pulled it into his fist, tugging it gently so Will felt the rasp of wool against his neck. "Stay in. With me."

"Like old times?" Will said. "A bottle of wine, candlelight? Talking about our rawest nerves, deepest pains and greatest pleasures as you watch the shape my mouth makes when I eat?"

"Why not?"

Will leaned over to kiss him, checked himself, and then kept going, making the barest contact with Hannibal's mouth, a mere brushing of lips.

"Because you don't think of me that way."

He pulled the edge of his coat out of Hannibal's fingers and left.

 

It was all Will's fault, Hannibal thought. He pressed two fingers to his lips as thought he could trap the feeling of the kiss and keep it there.  

Hannibal didn't put much stock in strict labels, but he had looked in every corner of Will's mind for anything he could use against him and he never saw a hint of repressed sexual desire there. He would have gleefully exploited any attraction his patient had for him. But maybe when he looked, it hadn't been there yet.

Will was fluid, and he had flowed in unpredictable ways.

Will came back in the small hours of the morning, leaving a yeasty and hops-bitter scent contrail from front door to bed. There was nothing else alien to his scent, other than the whiff of bar patron cigarette smoke that came out like a plume when he took off his coat.

No sex. Not tonight. Hannibal knew the scent of Will's emissions as well as his own.

Hannibal was wide awake and listened to Will in the next room getting ready for bed.  He wanted to eat him.

He had tried to eat Will before.  He had gotten close enough to recognize that it wouldn't have been the magic spell that he thought it would be, but once the circular saw comes out one is more or less committed. He had simply been following the pattern of the only other situation that was even remotely similar. He had loved his sister and he had eaten her. He regained the missing piece of his heart, and she would always be part of him.

 He didn't trust this hunger for Will that came from every place in his body except his stomach. His heart and brain, yes, and his guts and loins, his tongue and teeth. There was too much to reclaim. He needed to consume Will in a way that left them both more alive, not less.

 

Will thought he was dreaming when he felt the sag of the mattress, the draft of air as someone with night-cooled skin got into bed with him. He had had dreams exactly like this, more often lately. No prelude, no script, just sex. Hannibal's hands on him, under his clothes. He barely had time to formulate the desire before his mouth enfolded his still-hardening cock.

This felt more intense than his usual dreams and he wanted this to last. "You might want to slow down," Will said. Then the truth pierced through his groggy, intoxicated and lust-clogged brain. This felt so good and intensely realistic because it was no dream. "No, seriously, stop."

Will pushed Hannibal off him roughly. Their eyes had adjusted and there was just enough moonlight to make out the contours of each other's faces and the liquid sheen of their eyes.

"This is what you wanted," he said. "It's what I want."

"No, you don't. Don't force yourself." Another sick mind game, he thought. Another attempt to control him.

Hannibal brought his face up to Will's and kissed him long and deep.

"Does this feel forced to you?

"You don't think about me that way."

"I lied," Hannibal said, "or I told a half-truth. I don't think about you that way because I don't let myself."

"Why—"

"I love you and I've never had sex with anyone I loved."

He sounded both pained and relieved to say it.

"How long has this been going on?" Will asked.

 "How long have I wanted you? From the moment we met," he said. "Privately I called it aesthetic appreciation, and filed you away along with all the paintings and the beautiful sunsets. You were just another beautiful object. I made many sketches of you when we were apart."

"Sketches? What kind of sketches?" He had only seen that one where they were Greek heroes, tastefully draped.

"Anatomical studies in the classical style, sans fig leaf. Very academic and technical at first and then increasingly pornographic. But they weren't good enough. Without the person filling them out they were just lines and curves and angles." He ran his fingers down Will's ribs. "Smudges on a page. After a while I wasn't fantasizing about an object that had your dimensions. I was fantasizing about you. Everything that you are is what I wanted exactly. Nothing more or less would do."

Hannibal though briefly of the poet he had killed in Florence. Everything about him had sparked with potential. Hannibal had been tempted, drawn at first to his dark hair and blue eyes, his willingness to be influenced, the smartass cockiness that came from thinking he was always the smartest person in the room and often being right. The poet was so eager to be seduced into crime or sex, any experience he could grind up and make into fodder for his art. Instead, he became the fodder for Hannibal's art. He had been the blank paper Hannibal had used to write his love letter.

Hannibal wondered if Will had seen a "before" picture of the poet and whether or not he noted the physical similarities between them _. He's like you, but he's not you._   Perhaps Will would have seen that as a threat, rather than the indication of frustration that it had been.

"You fantasized about me?" Will said. He wanted the details. He could imagine the desire in wordless pictures. They were close enough thoughts to his own. He could, if he tried hard enough, translate them into words spoken in that distinct and recognizable voice.  But he had so many dealings in imagination; he wanted the words to travel through the air, undeniably real. Let them forge memories in all five senses. He didn't want Hannibal in a palace that was elaborate but imaginary. He wanted him here in their small rented home in their second-hand bed.

"Did you imagine our first kiss?" Will asked. "Did you imagine it would be me reaching out for you?"

"I didn't dare."

Will fanned his fingers out in the darkness, searching for landmarks in the space between them and easily found what he was looking for. He touched Hannibal in the way he would want to be touched, and hoped to be touched.

"Did you touch yourself and imagine it was me?" Will asked, his voice husky and low.

"Yes," he breathed and it was an answer to more than that question. "I did and for the first time I felt shame in my self-gratification."

"Why would you feel shame?" he asked as Hannibal pushed back against and into his hand. "You never feel shame."

"I was desperate, sick with need, wanting a beloved who did not want me back. It was weakness. I would have called it weakness in anyone else. Even if I got exactly what I wanted, I would have to ask you to be gentle, to beg you to have mercy."

Hannibal pulled away, but only so he could lie on his back. Will threw back the blanket so he was exposed. Will's eyes had adjusted enough to the dark so he could see in its entirety the body that had been so carefully hidden from him.

"So beg," he said.

"I love you in all the ways I can imagine and some I never thought myself capable of," Hannibal said. "I am giving myself into your hands. You have the power to undo me. You always have."

As Will shifted on top of him, Hannibal made an involuntary noise in his throat.

"Tell me more," Will said, lifting himself up so he could trail kisses from his neck down the center of his chest to his stomach. "Tell me all the ways you love me."

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "Sonnets from the Portuguese 43" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
> 
> How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.  
> I love thee to the depth and breadth and height  
> My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight  
> For the ends of being and ideal grace.  
> I love thee to the level of every day’s  
> Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.  
> I love thee freely, as men strive for right;  
> I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.  
> I love thee with the passion put to use  
> In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.  
> I love thee with a love I seemed to lose  
> With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,  
> Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,  
> I shall but love thee better after death.


End file.
